Aston Martin

2009

Aston Martin announced that they would compete for the overall win in the LeMans 24-hour race in June, exactly fifty years after the firm's DB-1 race car won the same race.

1959

Me? I prefer the old car: British Racing Green, wire wheels with knock-offs... Ahhhhh! Those were the days!

Joe Biden With A Pony Tail

From The Onion.

The Bacon Explosion

"Our source was The New York Times!"
Bacon love goes mainstream.

The Mind Reels

I know what you're probably saying. You're probably saying, "Turk, what the hell is that?"



Yeah, you probably spotted it. Something not quite right about that top picture. It's actually a 1903 Colt that was converted to a 1911-pattern by Cylinder And Slide as a master project in gunsmithing a couple of years ago. Here's a link. Pretty amazing, huh? They call it the "Model of 2006."

And, yeah, the lower picture is "Before" and the upper one is "After." Wow.
[Correction: it is a .45-ACP 1911 that was modified to resemble a 1903 Colt. No less amazing.]

What Kinds of Guns are Those?

Actress Astrid Swan filming "Bitch Slap".

A Film Named "Manure"

Starring (who else?):

From the L.A. Times.

There But For The Grace of God ...

Legendary Appalachian moonshiner Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton leaves U.S. District Court in Greeneville, Tenn., with his public defender Tim Moore, left on Monday. The 62-year-old Parrottsville author of the book "Me and My Likker" was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for illegally producing distilled spirits and being a felon in possession of a handgun.

h/t Volokh Conspiracy.

Just Fine, Thanks, And You?

H/T: Sharp As A Marble

Tribute To A Villainess

Blanche Yurka was 47 years old when she appeared in her first feature film, "A Tale of Two Cities" in 1935 as the half-mad Madame DeFarge. This is somebody you don't want to meet in a dark alley.

Madame DeFarge is depicted here about to murder a five-year-old child. She is ruthless, obsessed, bloodthirsty, treacherous, sinister and violent.

The storming of the Bastille is pretty effective. Resembles Griffith's "Intolerance", in scale, anyway. This is probably a "glass shot": only the base of the set was actually constructed. The rest was painted by an artist onto a large panel of plate glass mounted in front of the camera. The painting could take several days, walking back and forth to the camera to check on the image in the viewfinder. And once complete, the camera could not truck, pan or tilt, since the painting and the background would "separate". Today this is done with animation and computers and the camera can make wild gyrations while maintaining the illusion.

Blanche Yurka never got another plum film role like this one. She died in New York City on June 6, 1974.

But what an unforgettable performance she left behind!

Fascinating Scientific Research on Sexuality ...

... in the NYT.

New Gun

Last Sunday was a long day. I got up at 2 AM, and left work at 11:30 AM. Drove down to Richmond; Glen Allen, actually. There is a wonderful gun shop called Green Top Sporting Goods. It's kind of an old-fashioned country gunshop, but a big one. Hundreds of long arms, old and new, reloading supplies, etc. Nearly a complete inventory of just about anything you could want for shooting. Over the years I have bought a Springfield M1A and a Beretta 20-gauge O/U there.

But when I was only a mile from Green Top I saw something new: a mammoth Bass Pro Shops store. It's sort of a Walmart Supercenter for hunting and fishing gear. Everything from boats to bullets, and even an on-site restaurant. I went in to have a look around and the firearms section was packed. The handgun counter was jammed; customers standing two and three deep. The ammo shelves were thoroughly picked over and only a few scattered boxes remained.

With such a huge crowd at this new superstore, I was worried that Green Top may have been driven out of business, but no! When I got there it was also jammed with eager customers. The Gun Culture is alive and well in Richmond, Virginia! I spotted a Kimber Ultra CDP II in the display case but it was half an hour before I could get waited on. It was the last one they had. I also got 300 rounds of Remington-UMC 230-gr. There was only one magazine with the gun so I ordered a Wilson Combat and a Chip McCormick mag from Brownell's and they arrived only four days later.

The Ultra CDP II is a 1911-pattern pistol in 45-ACP with a 3" bushingless barrel. The frame is machined from a solid billet of 7075-T7 aluminum, then anodized black. The slide is stainless steel. Weight with an empty magazine is 23 ounces. The recoil springs are captive on a 2-piece concentric guide rod, so it requires a little paperclip-like tool to disassemble. The "CDP" means "custom defense package" and it's like a basic Kimber with all of the custom work that a typical new owner might send out a new carry gun to have done: trigger job, ambi safety, de-horned and tritium night sights.

But it wasn't until today that I was able to get some time to go to the range at the NRA in Fairfax. I fired 210 rounds (three magazines times seven rounds times ten with each mag) and I had ten failures. All of the failures were failures to fire; half of them were mis-feeds: the round was found to be caught with the bullet pointing straight up. The other half were failures to go into battery: the trigger wouldn't pull, although there was a round in the chamber and the hammer was cocked. The Wilson Combat mag had five failures, all on the last round in the magazine. The Kimber mag had four failures, three of which were on the last round in the magazine. The Chip McCormick mag had one failure, also on the last round in the magazine. There were no other failures, and the gun shot very accurately.

I measured the trigger pull with an old-fashioned Chatillion recording scale: the trigger has a pull of only four pounds; that's a bit startling the first time!

So it looks like I will have to get more of the Chip McCormick mags. They work very well with this gun, even better than the Kimber factory mag included with the gun.

Very nice, symmetrical firing pin strikes on the primers, too.

I think I'll keep it.

No Comment

The New York Times. All the new that fits in your ....

It's National Pie Day!

This is a walnut pie. As Jack Handey said, "When you die, if you get a choice of regular heaven or pie heaven, you should choose pie heaven. It might be a trick, but if it's not ... mmmmm boy!"

“What does it matter what you say about people?”

A very nice appreciation of Charlton Heston from the NYT last December. I missed it somehow. The picture above was taken in 1961. The quote is from the film "Touch of Evil", with Heston, Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich and Janet Leigh.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Played for you by The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain:



Thanks to Xavier!

Total Survivalist Libertarian Rantfest

Excellent new blog.

Now with 25% more cats!

Twenty-Eight Years Ago Today

Covering Reagan's first inaugural for Televiso Turonistani. On Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the FBI building. January 20, 1981.

Eight!

Eight degrees! Bwha-ha-ha-ha-haaaaa!

A Movie Reverie

I was watching the opening to the old TV show, "The Prisoner". The star, Patrick McGoohan, died the other day. I especially remember his cool car, a Lotus Super Seven (Still WANT!)

And the opening credits for this episode feature the character actor Finlay Currie.

I remember Finlay Currie for one of the most terrifying things I have ever seen in the movies, the opening from David Lean's "Great Expectations".

The 12-year-old boy is walking through the spooky old graveyard when this guy just LEAPS into the frame and grabs the kid and says, "Keep still you little devil or I'll cut your throat!"

Finlay Currie plays the escaped convict who, in typical Dickens fashion, reappears decades later in a completely unexpected way. But the graveyard scene? I literally jumped out of my chair the first time I saw that. And I still get a tingle out of it.

Kimber Ultra CDP II

This is what's at the top of my wish-list today.
45-ACP, 7+1, aluminum frame and stainless steel slide.
About $1100.

It's Twelve

Twelve degrees Fahrenheit. That's about -11 Celsius, I think.
I wish I was the kind of person who called in sick when I wasn't really sick.

The Most Amazing Bacon Recipe Ever

Courtesy of Bitter.

Yum!

A feller can dream, can't he?
($1500. Includes original box)

The Embalming of The Snark

The International Concatenated Order of Hoo-Hoo.

Jaunty Jackalope

Ubuntu 9.04 boots in 21 seconds. Scheduled for release in April. And look at all the geeks swarming here; 88,000 reads in less than 48 hours:

He Doesn't Do Windows

Interesting article in the NYT about Ubuntu Linux entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth.

Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again.

That's one of the most famous opening lines in fiction, along with:
"In the beginning ..."
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
"Call me Ishmael."

This is Alfred Hitchcock's movie of Daphne DuMaurier's novel Rebecca. Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine play the leads, along with a fantastic group of character actors: Nigel Bruce, Judith Anderson, George Sanders and Leo G. Carroll.

The title character, Rebecca, never appears in the movie and in fact she's dead when the movie begins. Her mysterious death drives the plot from beginning to end. It's not a typical Hitchcock movie, either. It's also unusual in that Joan Fontaine's character doesn't have a name; she's called "The Second Mrs. DeWynter" and addressed as "my dear" or "madame". We never hear her first name.

Anyway, it's a classic and an excellent way to spend a cold Sunday evening.

Full Moon

Beautiful full moon this morning. Picture taken with a 720p video camera and a 2X tele-extender and shot off the screen by my little Nikon.

Dress Rehearsal

This morning at 7:15 they were getting ready for the inauguration.

Steampunk Monopoly

Very cool!

Via Boing-boing.

The Little House On Butt Hole Road

Or Juggs Close.

Or Scratchy Bottom.

Strange and unearthly place names in England.

From the BBC.

The Baker Street Irregulars

Tomorrow, January 6, is Twelfth Night, and for many people the unofficial end of the Christmas season. But for a certain group of readers January 6 has another significance: It marks the presumed birthday of the greatest fictional character of modern times, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the world’s foremost consulting detective. Seventy five years ago Christopher Morley—the most popular literary journalist of his time—established a small sodality of Sherlockian enthusiasts that soon came to be called the Baker Street Irregulars. Before long this group started to meet for regular sluicings and carousings and Sherlockian disputation on the Friday nearest to January 6. That tradition has never ceased, and on Wednesday I travel to New York for the diamond jubilee of the BSI.

From the WaPo. But what is "sodality"? And what is a "sluicing"? Is that, like, transitive or something?

"Stairway To Heaven" and "Age Of Consent"

The NYT reviews two DVDs of films by British Director Michael Powell. I have a copy of "Stairway To Heaven" and it is a favorite.

But I didn't know that Powell also directed the even-more-obscure "Age Of Consent" (1969) starring James Mason and the 23-year-old Helen Mirren, who was cast principally because she was willing to play a nude model, er, mostly in the nude.

"Penis Fire" Suspect Is Charged

An Australian woman has appeared in court in Adelaide charged with murdering her husband by setting fire to his penis.

She claims his death was accidental.

If it's on the BBC it must be true ...

Who wants to start?

Snowflakes ...

Snowflakes In Hell, that is.

SIH is celebrating two years of blogging, so stop by and offer best wishes to one of the best gun blogs on the web.

Absinthe!

Very cool history, but you don't really want to drink that stuff, do you?

Try some Drambuie instead.

From the NYT.

All Clean!

Springfield 1911 9mm Stainless Steel and Tanfoglio Witness 10mm in Wonderfinish.

All clean and ready to go back into the vault.

Table Top

The other day I was getting dressed when I noticed this "what's in your pockets" layout so I took a snap. Live and unrehearsed.

Target Diagnosis

Here is a typical target from this afternoon's session.

It appears to be a clear example of jerking or slapping the trigger, according to this.

My range bag was a lot heavier on the way in than the way out.

Range Bound

I'm going to the range in a few minutes. I want to test the recoil spring in the Witness, which I have now re-replaced with the original spring (and corresponding firing pin spring), removing the Wolff 22-lb spring.

I also want to shoot my 9mm Springfield 1911 some, and my Glock 17.

That's about 200 rounds.

See ya later!

Indy Blogmeet Report

I didn't return home until yesterday, Friday, after a delightful week in Indianapolis.

On the previous Friday afternoon I boarded my plane in D.C. and settled in, but half an hour later the flight was canceled: very dense fog in Indy.

So I returned to the airport bright and early the next morning. This flight was uneventful and landed at Indy's huge new airport right on time. By that time the bowling pin shoot at the Marion County Fish and Game Club was over, and I had missed it. Turns out, though, that Roberta X, Tam, Brigid and Ahab had missed it, too. So I didn't feel so bad; it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun without mah Hoosier Homepersons.

Sunday was shooting at Popguns; I was anxious to try the new 22-lb recoil spring in my 10mm Witness. It failed to load about 75% of the Double-Tap rounds (power factor: 225). Looked to me like the breech was slamming shut before the round was in position. Too-powerful a recoil spring? Maybe. It does take the strength of a stevedore to rack the slide. I replaced the slide, barrel and magazines with 38-Super and continued; 38-Super worked faultlessly. While there we scored an (increasingly-rare) lower receiver parts kit for an AR-15.

Then to the Indy Blogmeet. In attendance were Brigid, Roberta X, Shermlock Shomes and Shermlock, Jr., Carteach, Og, Old Grouch, Red (and Mrs. Red). Missing were Ahab, Breda, Mike, RobD and, of course, Tam of Broad Ripple.

Monday a friend and I went gunstore crawling. We saw a beautiful little 1934 Beretta .380 in the display case. My friend, although from out-of-state, carried a C&R license. Bada-bing, bada-boom and the Beretta had a new owner. Two original magazines! Then carry-out from Yats. Yum!

New Years Eve it was my privilege to enjoy an evening with the loveliest, most erudite woman in the world; sort of a combination of Elle McPherson and Dorothy Parker. I brought flowers and chocolate. We dined, then toasted the New Year with champagne. I introduced her to the joys of Drambuie, the liqueur from the Isle of Skye.

On Friday it was time to return to Turonistan. Ah, well.

I have such marvelous memories of a magical week in Indianapolis.

Charts & Graphs

Joe Huffman has as excellent post on exterior ballistics (what happens to a bullet after it leaves the barrel) with outstanding illustrations.